By Rob Gowen
On March 18, 2024, after years and years of thinking, reading, planning, and hoping, I finally embarked on one of my lifelong bucket-list items: thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail.
My experience at Pine Island Camp over ten summers between 1981 and 1994, first as a camper and later as a staff member, had inspired me to hike the AT one day. As many of you know, PIC sends out trips along stretches of the AT throughout Maine and New Hampshire each summer.
However, I had not done any significant backpacking since my last summer at camp. My body had changed a lot during my 30-year career working in an office—and not in a good way. King Kababa would certainly have disapproved of my sedentary lifestyle. When I set out from the southern terminus of the AT at Springer Mountain, just north of Amicalola State Park in Georgia, I had just turned 52. Although I knew my body was not as strong (or lean) as it had once been, I had definitely underestimated the physical difficulty of the trail early on.
My preparation for the adventure had mostly involved spending a lot of time online, reading and watching videos about hiking and hiking gear. Today’s equipment and technology are vastly different from what was available in the 1980s; everything is lighter, more innovative, and expensive! An app called Far Out gave me mile-by-mile information about what I could expect on the trail, including water sources and shelter conditions, while my Garmin in-Reach ensured that I could easily request support in an emergency and even allowed me to stay in touch with my wife when there was no cell service on the trail. I’m in absolute awe of the thru-hikers from the 1970s and ’80s who would don cut-off jeans, a cotton T-shirt, and heavy boots and strap their equipment onto their backs using an external frame pack. They had to rely on paper maps, and their walking support came courtesy of a stick, rather than lightweight, graphite trekking poles. Hiking today has never been easier (but not easy), and I needed all the help I could get.
An “iconic barn” along the trail
Forging relationships with my fellow hikers also proved to be an early challenge, for a few reasons. The first was that the usual norovirus outbreak was particularly severe this year. The Georgia trail runners cautioned us to keep our distance from one another, so everyone slept in their tents—rather than the larger, communal shelters—and refrained from socializing at campsites, as they typically would have done. The second issue was the weather. March in Georgia was unseasonably cold, so hikers would retreat to the warmth of their tents as soon as they had finished eating dinner. The third issue was pace. Everyone was “hiking their own hike” as the saying goes (and rightly so), which meant that each person moved on a different schedule. Although the hiker bubble was huge, it was a bit amorphous. While some hikers were keen on forming a “tramily” (trail family) early on, I was still feeling things out and didn’t want to commit to any group right away. In retrospect, this seems a little odd, because at PIC, hiking was very much a group activity. Hiking solo was a unique experience at first.
As I progressed up the trail, the weather started to warm, norovirus faded away, and people with similar hiking schedules tended to naturally stay together, which gave me the chance to forge some nice relationships and hike with some wonderful people. After a few weeks, I reached the Great Smoky Mountains in Tennessee and North Carolina. The highest part of the trail travels along the border between the two states, and based on my experience hiking as a Pine Islander, I expected that any time I got higher than 4,000 feet in elevation, I’d be above the tree line, enjoying some gorgeous, expansive views. But that was not the case in the Smokies. Several times, the trail brought me up well over 5,000 feet, yet I was still surrounded by full vegetation and had only limited views. Because it was still winter, though, the trees had no foliage, so I’d occasionally be treated to some nice vistas, visible through the bare branches.
A campsite with a heck of a view
When I reached Vermont, my hike began to take on a much different tone. For most of the mid-Atlantic and southern New England sections, I’d been so wrapped up in trying to manage the heat that I had regrettably missed out on the full thru-hiker experience. Thankfully, as the trail took me further north, the weather became progressively more manageable. The temperature was still higher than I would have liked, but it was less of a hindrance. I started to feel as though I could hike just about anything without too much physical struggle.
Interestingly, once I entered the toughest parts of New Hampshire and Maine, I noticed that many of my fellow hikers began struggling to maintain the kind of daily mileage they’d been able to do further south, whereas I began to feel as though I had come into my own. I realized then how much I benefitted from having already hiked these sections of the AT during my PIC days—some of them more than once. Certain parts of the trail seemed so familiar, it was hard to believe I hadn’t touched that ground for more than 30 years. I lucked out and had perfect weather crossing the Presidential Range, which is one of the most beautiful (and challenging) sections of the trail. As a Pine Islander, I had hiked the Carter-Moriah Range (just north of Mount Washington) from north to south, but as a thru-hiker, I did so from south to north, and I can say with great confidence that those 20 miles are some of the toughest that anyone will find anywhere. My favorite trip down memory lane, though, was hiking Saddleback Mountain. I woke up early that day and reached the peak before any other hikers, so I had the place to myself. As I stood and enjoyed the view, many PIC memories came rushing back.
Getting close…
These memories and my deepening trail relationships took my focus away from the physical act of hiking, which I suspect is not actually the main point for most thru-hikers. Hiking with purpose, witnessing the beauty of nature, making human connections, being in the moment, and seeing the good in people are all more powerful aspects of the hike than just putting one foot in front of the other. Maybe I’m a slow learner, but it took me a long time to fully process that thru-hiking the AT is not really about hiking.
Early on in my days on the trail, I heard that there are three phases of a thru-hike: physical, mental, and spiritual. The first two are the challenges; the last one is the payoff. For me, entering Maine felt like the spiritual payoff. The trail is so remote, so wild, and so beautiful. I had more than 1,900 miles under my belt at that point, and while the terrain in Southern Maine is absolutely brutal (anyone who’s been on Old Speck will have an idea), it felt different to me. Maybe that’s because I spent so many summers at PIC, or it could be that the state just has a different feel. I can now say for certain that the PIC hiking trips traversed some of the most challenging terrain on the entire AT. I’m not sure whether the term “bulk” is still in use, but if it is, Pine Islanders represent it well.
The final stretch of the AT is known as the 100-Mile Wilderness, and it’s truly a hiker’s dream. I got lucky with great weather, and I hiked in the company of two phenomenal people. After being apart for months, I finally reunited with my wife, Seamane, in Baxter State Park on September 19th. We summited Katahdin the next day with a group of hikers I’d gotten to know well—some since Virginia. I couldn’t have asked for anything more. Many times, my thru-hike had seemed to be taking forever, and now, suddenly, we were at the peak of Katahdin! I didn’t really know how to react when I touched the famed sign at the summit. Some around me cheered with joy. Others sobbed at the enormity of it all. I was just happy to be done! I’d lost a lot of weight, my knees and hip were hurting, and I was ready to be home again. More than two months later, I’m still processing the whole experience.
My current challenge is figuring out how to capture the feeling and state of mind I had during my hike, now that I’m back at home. I don’t want to rush into anything. I’m renovating parts of our 100-year-old house, doing some contract work for my former employer, reconnecting with friends, and trying to focus on what I really want to do versus what I feel like I “should” be doing now that I’ve returned to the “real world.” I owe that to myself and to everyone who helped me along the way.
Mission accomplished! Rob and his wife, Seamane, at the summit of Mt. Katahdin.
This article was originally published in the February 2025 edition of The Pine Needle.